Thu, 12 Jul 2007

I normally avoid reading the Daily Kos, simply because of the lack of
in-depth consideration of the issues. I saw a "Ron Paul" tag on Technorati
and wondered about it. Found a Daily Kos diary entry. Ewwww, yuck! The
comments reflected not little thought, but instead no thought
at all. Here's a few representative comments:

But...no FDA, no public hospitals, no public education, etc. Hard-liner Libertarians are dumber than Communists.

Not a moment of thought put into why libertarians don't want the FDA? Don't want public hospitals? Don't want public education?

for instance, i consider myself a libertarian, but simply don't believe that corporations are persons entitled to the same rights as you and me. that takes out much of the big-L lunacy right there. i also strongly support socialized medicine...

A "libertarian" who supports socialized medicine? There's a name for people like that: socialists.

Libertarians as a breed tend to be extremely greedy and materialistic assholes who favor an utterly dehumanized concept of freedom weighted like lead toward property rights over the every day walking around liberty most of us want and need.

Okay, "greedy" and "materialistic"? No. Libertarians want people to be as wealthy as they can be, so that they will have the resources to fix the problems they see. Libertarians believe that most people are good, and if they aren't struggling themselves, will be happy to help others, voluntarily and peacefully. The reason libertarians want strong property rights is because "every day walking around liberty" depends on being able to leave your property and know that when you come back, it will still be there.

The standard of living is tied to two things: use of technology and population size. To get a higher standard of living you have to increase the availability of technology or decrease population or both.

Somehow this person thinks that more people makes us worse off. That flies in the face of logic. We have more people in the world than we've ever had before, and most people are better off than they've ever been. Not everyone; most people.

Just as hardcore communism ignores the individualistic aspect of human nature, hardcore libertarianism ignores the societal aspect of human nature.

That's a completely baseless charge. It would only be true if the societal aspect of human nature involved forcing people to assocate against their will.